A one-week class at Harvard University changed the course of Stewart Wangard’s career.

It was 2005, Wangard had already served as president of The Boerke Co. and grown Wangard Partners Inc., which he founded 13 years earlier, into one of the top real estate brokerage firms in the Milwaukee area. Harvard accepted his application for the rigorous course, and he joined a group of 40 real estate pros assembled from around the world.

When he returned to Milwaukee, Wangard told his wife that he was dropping the brokerage side of the company, abandoning a huge investment in that business, to focus entirely on development.

“There’s this hunger that all of us have to go and improve ourselves and I knew that I was doing a good job in the Milwaukee area, but I realized I had a lot more to learn,” Wangard said. “They dove down deep and they said, ‘OK, why are you doing this?’ I’ve always enjoyed the real estate brokerage business, working for others.

“There’s a tremendous difference though, once you get to the development side. The development side is a creative process. You start with the germ of an idea or your client has an idea and it’s your responsibility to create the vision and you convert it into bricks and mortar.”

Wangard’s first project after making that shift was the High Pointe Office Center on North Mayfair Road in Wauwatosa, where Wangard Partners’ office is located. Wangard keeps a photo of the Harvard class in his office there.

Since developing High Pointe, Wangard has grown to become one of the most active developers in the Milwaukee area. In the past two years, his projects include The Preserve at Prairie Creek, which started its second phase in Oconomowoc last month; the six-story apartment building at 1910 N. Water St. in Milwaukee; a new Grafton office for Regal-Beloit Corp.; and the multi-phase Park East Square apartments in Milwaukee. He also has development sites in Shorewood and one near 1910 N. Water St. and Park East Square in Milwaukee. Wangard‘s projects stretch from northern Illinois to Minneapolis.

“Milwaukee’s always been important to us,” Wangard said. “We’re now bringing the money back home and we’re investing locally.”

Wangard said his job is to build communities. That includes the job-creation from construction, but also the effect buildings have on the neighborhood. His projects are heavy on commons areas and public spaces.

“People in the development world are considered out there as somebody who is just trying to go and develop a project purely for personal gain,” Wangard said. “It’s not. When we’re developing projects, you’ve got to keep in mind there are a lot of people who are impacted by our projects. Our investors are one. Our lenders are involved. The people who work on the projects; we’re heavily involved in job creation.”

Finding partners

Wangard constantly returns to the theme of teamwork, or partnership, when talking about his business. That includes 100 investors who are involved with his projects, contractors who build them and architects who design them. It is also evident in the way he spoke about resolving a conflict this past summer with the Service Employees International Union Local 1, which had protested Wangard Partners’ hiring of a nonunion company to clean a Milwaukee office building. Partially with the assistance of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Department of City Development commissioner Rocky Marcoux, the parties reached an agreement in September.

“It’s much, much more difficult when you are personally involved, and at times, you need to go and step back and listen to the other people around you,” Wangard said. “We understand there is a common ground. How do you go and make Milwaukee as vibrant as possible? How do you create jobs in Milwaukee? How do you grow the economy locally? You can’t have any one group or individual hold that back.”

Wangard’s emphasis on his partners is especially evident when he talks about the 28 workers at his company, especially president Wayne Wiertzema and Tony DeRosa, vice president.

“We all have areas of focus that we are strong in,” DeRosa said. “It just kind of naturally has happened where there are parts of a project where one of us takes a lead.”

Wangard is still hungry — he wants to double his base of investors and keep a solid team at the company to push more projects forward.

“Short-term, it’s just getting buildings built,” he said. “Getting as many jobs as possible.”